How much is news worth? Several websites say pay up to read more

How much is news worth? Several websites say pay up to read more

Newspaper readers are like Republican voters: They're old, they're white and they don't like change.
Courtesy of Robert K. Whittman

Newspaper execs are furiously seeking ways to get readers to buy something online that the papers have given away for free since the inception of the Internet.
EcoChamber.com

No, it's not the newspaper — it's the new houstonchronicle.com.

The Dallas Morning News put a large portion of its material behind a paywall on its website a year ago and has lost more than one-third of its audience.
Courtesy of Dallas Morning News

It's a sad truth: Newspapers are dying. I worked at the Houston Post and Houston Chronicle for three decades before joining CultureMap, so it pains me to state the obvious. Newspaper readers are like Republican voters: They're old, they're white and they don't like change.

As circulation continues to dwindle, newspapers find themselves in an odd predicament. They are furiously seeking ways to get readers to buy something online that the papers have given away for free since the inception of the Internet.

Newspaper readers are like Republican voters: They're old, they're white and they don't like change.

The HoustonChronicle is the latest newspaper to charge for columns and stories that previously could be accessed for free. Recently it launched HoustonChronicle.com, a pay site that costs $2.50 per week to access if you are not already a newspaper subscriber.

The newspaper will continue to operate the free chron.com, offering news, weather, pop culture and the like. But most columnists, along with "deep analysis, enterprise reporting, exclusive photos....plus everything found in our your daily newspaper," will be behind the paywall, according to a letter to readers in last Sunday's print edition.

Other newspapers have tried some sort of paywall without much success.

In 2005, the New York Times launched a paywall that sounds suspiciously like the Chron's. Times Select put popular columnists like Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman behind the paywall, charging readers $49.95 a year for access. The columnists hated it because they were less accessible, and readers stayed away in droves.

More than a year-and-a-half ago, the Times went to a "metered" paywall that cuts off access after 20 stories, thus encouraging readers to purchase a digital subscription. (The number of stories was recently reduced to 10.) It now has more than 566,000 digital subscribers, raking in about $100 million in revenue a year.

Since then, just about every other newspaper has jumped in. The Los Angeles Times instituted a metered paywall in March and, soon afterward, an industrious writer for LA Weekly told readers how to get around the 15-story monthly limit. (Open a new browser or remove all cookies from your web history.)

The Dallas Morning News put a large portion of its online material behind a paywall a year ago and has lost more than one-third of its audience.

The Houston Chronicle's model seems patterned after The Boston Globe, which went to a two-site strategy last year. The Globe launched a pay site, BostonGlobe.com, with serious news to complement its sillier Boston.com site, which featured such stories as "The Sexiest Vampires on Screen" and "Massachusetts Transgender Inmate Fighting for Electrolysis."

Subscriptions to BostonGlobe.com have been sluggish, with only 18,000 subscribers through last spring, leading the paper to tout a free trial offer. Makes you wonder what will transpire in Houston.

I realize papers are in a tough spot and are desperate for more revenue, but the paywall doesn't make a lot of sense — even if it is a harbinger of a time in the not-too distant future when newspapers are no longer printed on paper.

The two-pronged site seems awfully confusing and, with so many other sources on the web, I'm convinced that readers will be savvy enough to find the information they need elsewhere.

Any time the free flow of news and information is restricted, everyone loses.